The explanation: Fire station pets have not been permitted here for the last two decades, because medical supplies and equipment are stored and dispensed to ambulance crews from this particular station. Pets pose a sanitation issue.

I asked readers and subscribers to the Pet Pal Connection newsletter to vote, stay or go, and the response was overwhelmingly in favor of stay. Many readers also called out fire department officials, and demanded that Edna be allowed to stay.

Here are some of the comments.

DEAR JOAN: We at Palo Alto Humane Society believe that Edna’s home is in that fire station and she should be allowed to stay.

Numerous studies have shown how therapy animals help out in the workplace, providing comfort and positive interaction as well as increasing productivity of the workers. Fire station employees are under tremendous stress and risk their lives on a daily basis to protect the community, and they realize that Edna plays an important, and can we say irreplaceable, role throughout their work day.

It has saddened us to think that the sole complainant is more likely than not unaware of the value of a therapy cat in a stressful work environment. Yes, we are dismayed by that complaint and by the importance given to that one complaint versus the overall benefit Edna offers to everyone else at the station.

At all levels and all venues of PAHS’ education programs, we stress the importance of animals in our lives, reflecting on the human-animal bond and underscoring the roles played by service and therapy animals. We discuss why domestic animals are so well suited to helping us and point out the many benefits they provide. Our youngest students are able to respond to our questions about the ways in which their pets help them.

It is mind-boggling that the decision-makers in the San Francisco Fire Department have chosen to devalue the most simple of concepts around the benefits of companion therapy and service animals.

Thank you again for giving concerned readers the opportunity to respond to this issue.

Leonor Delgado, education manager, Palo Alto Humane Society

DEAR JOAN: Yes, Edna should stay! It has been her home for 5 years and she would be incredibly traumatized. Who could be so mean?

Sue Burchfield, Bay Area

DEAR JOAN: This is ridiculous that an innocent animal should be evicted from the fire station. Why? What could she have done that would call for eviction? Ridiculous. Edna should stay.

Betty Shorey, Bay Area

DEAR JOAN: She should stay with the people that rescued her. She feels safe with them, not to mention the stress relief she provides for them on their safe return from a stressful job.

Edna stays. Whoever complained needs to go.

Suzy, Bay Area

DEAR JOAN: Of course, she should be allowed to stay. The reason given for her eviction — that she might contaminate stored medical supplies — is ludicrous. The person who complained about her should be the one evicted.

Joan Morris is the pets & wildlife columnist for the Bay Area News Group. She also writes about gardening and is the founder of Our Garden, a demonstration garden in Walnut Creek. Morris started her career in 1978 as a reporter for a small New Mexico newspaper. She has lived in the Bay Area since 1988.